If you were a viewer of The West Wing, you may recall the phrase ‘Take out the trash day’.

It’s a day when either the news is so dominated by one story that other news doesn’t get much noticed, or for other reasons there is just not as much scrutiny of announcements as usual.

On the last Commons sitting day before Christmas, the Government had one big publication it knew would lead the news – the strategy to tackle violence against women and girls.

But the same day – a day with no votes, which usually centres on the pre-recess adjournment debate, and when some people’s thoughts were probably already elsewhere – the Government issued no fewer than 13 written ministerial statements.

Not all were bad news – and some of them would have been on this day just because of an end-of-year deadline. But it does mean less scrutiny. There was disquiet about not being able to fully debate the police settlement for constabularies including Hampshire’s, for example.

Away from Parliament, the Government revealed that they will in future do fewer full press conferences with ‘the Lobby’ – the set of experienced journalists who cover Parliament and government most closely and can be briefed ‘on Lobby terms’. Instead there will be a bigger role for online ‘content creators’. This does not, I believe, bode well for challenge and balance.

One item that did warrant an oral statement, not just a written note, appeared on the Order Paper as ‘Local Government Reorganisation’ – but turned out to be an announcement about a potential further postponement of some local elections. This follows last year’s cancellations and the Government’s decision to delay the first election for the mayor of Hampshire and the Isle of Wight, along with other new mayoralties.

As I wrote on social media: “In a democracy in peacetime, you can’t just decide to put off elections. You just can’t.” And you will have seen in this newspaper, local leaders in Hampshire, including the leader of Hampshire County Council, confirmed that they are not asking for elections to be postponed.

It will feel to many, I am sure, that a number of the things we rightly think of as fundamental in our democracy are wrongly being put in question. The elections timing announcement follows the Government’s policy proposals on jury trials and digital ID cards.

Just how risky this is at a time when trust is already eroded was illustrated on the Sunday following. Asked whether the deadline for the general election could be put back, an at-first indirect response from the chair of the Labour party, led to a clickbait-y headline (and of course much social media follow-up) that she had ‘failed to rule out’ postponing that too.

Now, to be clear, I do not think for a moment that the Government would try to push the general election beyond the limit of five years and 25 days since the last one. But when you convey that the timings of local elections can be put back, it undermines belief in the integrity of the system, and some people start to wonder what they can rely on.